Passage of time doesn't ease pain of crash victims' families
It was 10 years ago Wednesday that their children died.
In the past decade, the families went from victim to advocate, sparked tougher laws and watched the drunken driver behind their grief be freed from prison, only to end up behind bars again.
But one constant has remained -- Allison, Jenni Linn and Jennifer are never coming home.
As they do each year, the families of the Waubonsie Valley High School girls gathered at 4:05 a.m. Wednesday at the crash scene to mark the exact moment their lives changed forever.
"We just feel like a part of them for that split-second," said Pam Anderson of Naperville. "We lay a flower and light a candle. We just kind of hug each other and whisper words to the girls."
Her daughter, Jenni Linn, died Oct. 17, 1997, along with best friends Allison Matzdorf and Jennifer Roberts, all 16, after an intoxicated motorist sparked a collision while running a red light at Eola Road and New York Street in Aurora.
Randall Visor survived the crash, but his passenger, Ana Pryor, a 27-year-old mother of three, was killed. Visor served less than one-third of a 13-year prison term before being paroled in 2002. He was arrested again March 16, 2006, for driving with a revoked license.
The 38-year-old Batavia man was in a Kane County courtroom Wednesday afternoon to ask a judge if he can serve in a work-release program during his jail term.
Judge William Weir doubled Visor's jail sentence to 364 days and also granted him work release. Visor will be allowed to leave for 10 hours Monday through Friday to work second shift at a Caterpillar plant in Montgomery.
The pain lingers
Despite the passage of time, the girls' parents said they still get that same knot in their stomachs when recalling the sights, sounds and emotions of that morning.
It's the details -- the sickening realization that a child is missing, a police chaplain arriving at the door, a lifeless body on a steel table -- that never can be forgotten.
Still, with time, change has come. Outrage from the four deaths sparked a widespread effort to stiffen the penalties for drunken drivers who kill.
A law that went into effect Jan. 1, 2000, doubled the penalties from 14 to 28 years in prison for intoxicated motorists convicted in crashes involving multiple deaths. It also required that they serve 85 percent of the prison term before being eligible for parole.
The law was drafted by DuPage County State's Attorney Joe Birkett and Michael Wolfe, the criminal chief who prosecuted Visor.
More recently, the families, including Pryor's children, successfully lobbied for a measure that makes driving with a revoked license a felony offense for any motorist with a prior reckless homicide conviction.
Pam Anderson and her husband, Shelly, who serves on the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists' board of directors, became grandparents eight months ago. All of the families watched their children's former classmates grow into adulthood and begin careers and families.
Allison, Jenni Linn and Jennifer were robbed of those milestones, but at least one mother still speaks each night to the teenager she long ago lost but will never forget.
"Ten years is a long time," Pam Anderson said, "but it feels like yesterday and it always will. It's just something that we have to deal with. And we do -- every day."